Virtually all oxygen on Earth was and is produced by photosynthesis, which was invented by tiny organisms, the cyanobacteria, when our planet was still a rather uninhabitable place.
Around 120 million years ago, the earth experienced an extreme environmental disruption that choked oxygen from its oceans. Known as oceanic anoxic event (OAE) 1a, the oxygen-deprived water led to […]
Earth’s history knows catastrophes which are unimaginable for humans. For example, around 66 million years ago an asteroid impact marked the end of the dinosaur era. Long before however, 252 […]
Mammals and birds today are warm-blooded, and this is often taken as the reason for their great success. University of Bristol palaeontologist Professor Mike Benton, identifies in the journal Gondwana […]
Imagine reading by the light of an exploded star, brighter than a full moon – it might be fun to think about, but this scene is the prelude to a […]
Recent studies of the effects on the Earth’s atmosphere by astrophysical sources, such as nearby gamma-ray bursts or supernovae, have shown that these events could lead to severe changes in […]
Several exoplanets have been discovered to date, and the next step is the search for extraterrestrial life. However, it is difficult to estimate the number of life-bearing exoplanets because our […]
The Late Devonian was a protracted period of low speciation resulting in biodiversity decline, culminating in extinction events near the Devonian-Carboniferous boundary. Recent evidence indicates that the final extinction event […]
It’s not often that scientists are able to find tuff in continental sedimentation, but this was accomplished in the PreUrals region by Kazan Federal University, Borisyak Institute of Paleontology, and […]
We consider the implications that a debris belt located between Proxima b and Proxima c would pose for the rate of large asteroid impacts that could sterilize Proxima b from […]
